A few months before France declared war upon England,
February 1, 1793, Edmond Genet was appointed French
Minister to the United States. He landed at Charleston,
April 8, and at once began activities so authoritative
as to amount to an erection of French sovereignty
in the United States. The subsequent failure
of his efforts and the abrupt ending of his diplomatic
career have so reacted upon his reputation that associations
of boastful arrogance and reckless incompetency cling
to his name. This estimate holds him too lightly
and underrates the peril to which the United States
was then exposed. Genet was no casual rhetorician
raised to important office by caprice of events, but
a trained diplomatist of hereditary aptitude and of
long experience. His father was chief of the bureau
of correspondence in the Department of Foreign Affairs
for the French monarchy, and it was as an interpreter
attached to that bureau that the son began his career
in 1775. While still a youth, he gained literary
distinction by his translations of historical works
from Swedish into French. Genet was successively
attached to the French Embassies at Berlin and Vienna,
and in 1781 he succeeded his father in the Department
of Foreign Affairs. In 1788, he was Secretary
of the French Embassy at St. Petersburg, where his
zeal for French Revolutionary principles so irritated
the Empress Catherine that she characterized him as
“a furious demagogue,” and in 1792 he
was forced to leave Russia. In the same year he
was named Ambassador to Holland, and thence was soon
transferred to the United States.

It is obvious that a man of such experience could
not be ignorant of diplomatic forms and of international
proprieties of behavior. If he pursued a course
that has since seemed to be a marvel of truculence,
the explanation should be sought in the circumstances
of his mission more than in the nature of his personality.
When the matter is considered from this standpoint,
not only does one find that Genet’s proceedings
become consistent and intelligible, but one becomes
deeply impressed with the magnitude of the peril then
confronting the United States. Nothing less than
American independence was at stake.

It should be borne in mind that France, in aiding
America against England, had been pursuing her own
ends. In August, 1787, the French government
advised its American representative that it had observed
with indifference the movements going on in the United
States and would view the break-up of the Confederation
without regret. “We have never pretended
to make of America a useful ally; we have had no other
object than to deprive Great Britain of that vast
continent.” But, now that war with England
had broken out again, it was worth while making an
effort to convert America into a useful ally.
Jefferson, while Minister to Paris, had been sympathetic
with the Revolutionary movement. In 1789, the
English Ambassador reported to his government that
Jefferson was much consulted by the leaders of the